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Category Archives: Happiness

What Your Favorite Christmas Song Says About You

December 9th, 2011

Your favorite Christmas song speaks volumes about who you are – what kind of personality you exhibit. Whether you’re an aggressive, take charge person or a sit on the side lines and follow type, the music you listen to can give a peek into the kinds of attitudes and beliefs you have.

Different dimensions go into making us who we are as people. Psychologists have studied human behavior for years through research groups, quizzes, and surveys. They’ve gathered the data from these tests and compiled them into different categories based on the answers given by the study participants.

In these scientific tests, several different questions will be asked for each category. The study takes into consideration where you live at the present time and where you resided as a child, because our environment plays a role in our music choice based on the influence of our upbringing.

Educational background, both of the parents and your own, will be factored into the results as well. By taking part in these tests, psychologists have been able to accurately pinpoint people who are introverts or extroverts. Hard to believe that a simple test can tell whether you’re a social butterfly or low-key, but it can.

You can take part in one of these scientific studies to see what it will show about you. Some of the aspects of your personality you might already be well aware of, but the results could surprise you.

Even Christmas songs will show your personality. People who actively seek to give to others through charity work, financial donations or who give of their time to improve others’ lives tend to listen to more traditional Christmas songs such as Silent Night or Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Most people in this group enjoy reading and they enjoy listening to classical music as well as traditional Christmas songs.

For people who are career oriented, Christmas songs with a rock beat are usually the tunes of choice. While they enjoy the traditional songs, they prefer the more modern versions.

They thrive on life in the fast lane and get an adrenaline rush from handling seemingly insurmountable tasks. More often than not, their motto is “bring it on!” They enjoy pitting themselves against nature by taking part in outdoor activities that require stamina and skill such as white water rafting or jumping from an airplane.

People who prefer soft, jazzier Christmas music tend to be introverted and will often find themselves feeling a bit melancholy. These people are more open minded and highly intelligent. They also usually keep their finances in tip top shape and are highly organized people. Check into a personality quiz and see what your kind of preferred Christmas song says about your life.

 

 

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Are There Any Health Benefits Of Positive Thinking

June 24th, 2011
Think positive! You Can Do It!

Image by viZZZual.com via Flickr

Many of us have the idea that benefits of positive thinking extend to our physical health as well as our mindset, and research has shown that this may just be true. Here is a guide to some of the benefits you may feel if you work on developing a more positive outlook on life.

Positive Thinking Helps Beat Stress and Illness

Whether you see the glass as half full or half empty can have a huge impact on the way you deal with life’s problems. Those who are generally more optimistic will often see the silver lining in situations that would otherwise make them stressed. And there is a direct link between our stress levels and the way our immune system works.

Other studies have shown that negative thoughts may also directly affect our immunity to certain conditions. One study suggested that increased brain activity while thinking negative thoughts was related to our body’s response to the seasonal flu vaccination. Negative emotion and self-talk is also a huge factor in those suffering from depression.

A positive outlook has also helped people dealing with serious long term illnesses such as cancer. Those who practice positive thinking – by keeping check on the stream of thoughts that go through their brain throughout the day – were known to reduce some of the negative side effects of their treatment, and help increase the speed of recovery.

The Research Isn’t Yet Clear

The research isn’t yet conclusive when it comes to the many benefits of positive thinking on our health. However, Mayo Clinic states that positive thinking may affect more areas than we realize, including:
* Increasing our life span,
* Giving us greater resistance to the common cold,
* Improving physical wellbeing in general,
* Lowering our chances of becoming depressed,
* Helping us to cope better with difficulties in life,
* And reducing the risk of a fatal cardiovascular disease.

There are many theories as to why positive thinkers may experience some or all of these health benefits, but it generally comes down to the fact that positive thinkers are less stressed in general. This, in turn, is a result of what we tell ourselves day-to-day.

We all have a stream of thoughts, and we don’t even notice most of the thoughts that pop into our minds. Studies have shown that there are as many as thousands of negative thoughts going through our minds every day. It’s not difficult to understand why a constant stream of negative thoughts can lead to a negative outlook on life, making it harder to deal with difficult situations!

As you can see, the benefits of positive thinking aren’t limited to happiness. It can affect all areas of our lives if we work on our thoughts properly.

 

Docmac

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The Art Of Anti-Negative Thinking

June 24th, 2011
Cover of "The Tipping Point: How Little T...

Cover via Amazon

Learning how to stop negative thoughts takes time and practice. Since negative thinking is really a habit, the first step is catching when you’re thinking negatively to begin with. Once you start to notice your negative thoughts, you can weigh them up against the evidence in order to convince yourself that they’re not really true.

It Takes Evidence To Challenge Your Negative Thoughts

You may know by now that your negative thoughts aren’t rational at all. But no matter how much you, or others, tell yourself that fact, it’s still near impossible to stop yourself from thinking them. This is why you need to go one step further and start gathering evidence that’ll convince you that your negative thoughts aren’t true.

Step By Step Guide To Challenging Your Thoughts

Step 1 - The first step is to take a broad category of negative thought. For example, you may choose to work on your negative body image, or you could choose the thought “I am unlucky”. Whatever you do, don’t work on every single one of your negative thoughts at once. It takes time to learn how to stop negative thoughts, so work on them gradually.

Step 2 - Now that you’ve got your broad category, you can start to think about all the thoughts that come under that heading. Take the negative body image example, some of your regular thoughts may be “I can’t wear tight dresses as they show off my big butt” or “everyone pays attention to my pretty best friend and not me” or “I’ll always be alone. Nobody finds me attractive”. Make a list of these thoughts on one side of a table.

Step 3 - Now it’s time to look for the evidence to support your thoughts. On the other side of the table, write down the evidence in real life that will boost that thought. For example, for the thought  “I’ll always be alone. Nobody finds me attractive”, you might write that nobody has ever, in fact, told you that you were unattractive, and that there’s no logical reason for you to believe you’ll always be alone. Or that school bullies may have picked on you, but nobody who cares has mentioned anything. You can also write evidence such as “I personally don’t judge people solely on looks, so why would people judge me solely on looks?”

Do you understand how this is working? Writing out the evidence is forcing you to go through your life to see whether your thoughts actually come from something solid. A “feeling” that people think you’re unattractive isn’t enough. This is the place for cold, hard evidence. Sure, we’ve all had some negative comments or things that made us feel less than great. But when you start to write out the facts, you’ll probably realize that your thoughts are even more irrational than you first thought!

Now What?

You should repeat this for every kind of negative thought that you think. You may even need to repeat it a number of time for different sets of negative thoughts, as it takes a while for your emotions to catch up with your rational brain! Over time, however, you’ll find that it is possible to know how to stop negative thoughts, and that your negative thinking “habit” actually turns into far more rational thinking.

 

Docmac

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